Big Ben D’ughhhh

Apparently there is a campaign to get the tower in which Big Ben is housed renamed after Queen Elizabeth II. What? You thought it was the place that was called Big Ben? You idiot. It is just the bell that is called Big Ben. Didn’t you even know that? Yes, you did. Right – because everyone knows it. It’s one of them things that has become classed as trivia, when really its just a fact that has been muddied by the dissemination of lies by people talking about it as though the tower itself is Big Ben. Yeah, ok that is trivia: but you know what I mean: it is not like knowing the ratio of Americans with a flower growing in their ear or who played a one-off character in Cheers. The tower that houses the bell called Big Ben is only known as Big Ben because that’s what everyone calls it.

When you find out it is a minor shock to your belief system but you get on with life. Like when you find out Blackpool Tower is called Ian.

Labour MP Ronnie Campbell dpesn’t mind having a pop at the royals – not really minding who he offends. Actually he is really rather respectful and nice about her M’aamgersty. Fortunatley this is a Daily Mail article and the disrespest is yanked out of him:

Why should we be ruled over by families descended from robber  barons, bandits and illegitimate heirs?

‘Or, in the case of the current lot, fifth-generation Germans who changed their name from Battenberg to Windsor during the First World War.’

He then goes on to say that she has no right to ‘lord it over him’. I am pretty sure she DOES. It is this right that I have the issue with.  I think my favourite part of his whole anti-royal stance is the sentence “It is a better legacy than waving from cars and opening Parliament while wearing a heavy crown.”  Apart from the fact it is quite funny to summise the Queen’s contribution as nothing more than this I like that he says the crown is heavy. Is that sympathy for the monarch? Or bitter resentement at the weight of the precious metals and jewels adorning her hat.

He then rattles on with some more anti-establishment stuff before deciding that we should wait to overthrow the bastards what keep us down because the Queen is a nice lady. He has a point. I think a lot of people kind of don’t mind royalty because of the Queen, and her mam (GRHS). When she has popped her clogs will everyone slowly accept that it’s a bit if an odd thing to have these people living in a big house for no reason other than they just have done for ages. Squatters are a fucking nightmare.

Little Baby Nothing to Say

Little Baby Nothing is a Manic Street Preachers song. I have never heard it (well I have just heard a bit of it now because I looked it up ahead of writing this to check if it was a song that I did know but just didn’t know what it was called). I don’t particularly like the MSP. I like two of their albums and another 6 or 7 songs from their career. Other than that:

• I think the drummer looked like Paul Merton
• I got nothing out of looking at the pictures of the former guitarist Richey Edwards forearms after he slashed ‘4REAL’ in to them to prove he wasn’t fake*
• I fucking hate Nicky Wire.

So why was my head constantly thinking the title to this song, Little Baby Nothing?

That’s it – there is no coda to this. If you want a more traditional anecdotal blog why not try tomorrow when I will be finding out that I will go to the gym and find out that I haven’t paid any fees for 6 months.

*Didn’t prove it if you ask me. And if I was potato headed journo Steve Lamacq I would have said it to him as his arm bled on me: “You dick, that just proves you’re prepared to cut your arm.”